the unfortunate answer is probably "never". you need STR more than ATT for yukikaze/gekko/kasha, and you need haste, sTP, and ACC more for TPing.

the possible uses for shogun riceballs seem to be... polearm (but sacrificing 2 haste areas and not getting sTP out of it, + no ACC so you might be in trouble if you use askar for sTP)... all the good stuff about shogun rice balls indeed benefits pentathrust and polearm DoT generally. unfortunately, wearing haste/ACC/ATT/sTP and eating pizza+1 or something else will probably benefit you more than the rice ball idea.

the other thing that miiiiight go well with shogun rice balls is lv5 relic. i had a friend who swore by a really gung ho "double attack build" for his amano. at first i was like, "whoa whoa whoa" (because "double attack builds" are a bad idea in general; 1 point of DA doesn't get better when stacked like haste), but he explained that he a) needed attack for kaiten (which doesn't get as big an innate ATT boost as yuki/gekko/kasha, if any at all), and b) that the point of all the DA was SCing with himself. i'm not certain that his idea was valid (if a gun was held to my head, i would guess haste would serve him better), but it at least makes sense as a possibility.

summary: you give up too much to gain too little from rice balls. the DA helps you WS more often, but so would the haste you're giving up. most of SAM's damage is WS, which (if you use y/g/k) ATT often doesn't even affect (because the bonus on y/g/k caps you), so even if rice balls win for TP, they're benefiting the wrong part of your damage.

edit: for your other questions, see other posts. /DRG is good if you have a lot of haste and wear all the /DRG specific gear (earring and back). /WAR is good. /RNG not so much. uhhh, equip setups, see other posts.

Being they are so expensive and hard to get ahold of, I can't really answer your question. However, i would like to point out that only the ATT, DEF, and Double Attack are tripled with all 3 pieces, so only 4 dex.

Despite these issue, I can tell you that a tonosama riceball setup for polearm, with all 3 pieces, and acc/att gear, can totally tear it up.

Being they are so expensive and hard to get ahold of, I can't really answer your question. However, i would like to point out that only the ATT, DEF, and Double Attack are tripled with all 3 pieces, so only 4 dex.

Despite these issue, I can tell you that a tonosama riceball setup for polearm, with all 3 pieces, and acc/att gear, can totally tear it up.

Being they are so expensive and hard to get ahold of, I can't really answer your question. However, i would like to point out that only the ATT, DEF, and Double Attack are tripled with all 3 pieces, so only 4 dex.

Despite these issue, I can tell you that a tonosama riceball setup for polearm, with all 3 pieces, and acc/att gear, can totally tear it up.

Pentathrust is about landing all 5 hits. 1 DEX = .75 Acc + is a WS modifer + helps the crit hit rate. The first one is the important one.

And the 3rd one is COMPLETELY irrelevant. Crit rare does not affect any WS unless it specifically says in the text "Chance of critical hit varies with TP." As penta does not say this, crits do nothing for penta. Nada. Zip. Zero.

The ONLY way you can crit a WS without "crit vaties with TP" is to stack with SA, (also TA if Thf main post 60), or a war using mighty strikes. (by the way, fully buffed up War with zerk/mighty strikes/War's charge and penta is SICK!)

On another note, i realize im spoiled with Drgs awesome polearm acc, but do you REALLY need to stack dex because your acc sucks that bad? With access to hasso, gear like hauby/kitty pants/that set of Str gear with latent atk/acc bonus on WS not to mention a plethora of other great gear. Sam is in no shortage of gear options. I cant imagine Sam is in such dire straights as to need to STACK dex for acc. (and kitty pants isnt stacking dex. It just happens to be a completely ludicrous amount in one slot)

On another note, i realize im spoiled with Drgs awesome polearm acc, but do you REALLY need to stack dex because your acc sucks that bad?

No I need to stack DEX due to my habit of firing off WSs at 100% TP and wanting all 5 hits to land. There is a bit of a difference between an A+ skill and a B- one.

All you had to do was admit your wrong about the whole Penta Thrust Criting.

I can't think of a slot where acc would'nt beat out DEX. Unless you have a Haidate and no Shura Haidate(+1) yet, but theres not many sam's out there that have kitty haidate and not shura haidate. The big numbers from Penta come from Double Attack's and/or high att from max hits landing.

Edit: also, the difference between an A+ skill and a B- is 32ACC, Crab Sushi covers a large portion of the gap. A simple change in food is all that's needed and a good ws set with lots of ACC. Many of the ACC pieces have additional beneficial stats on anyway, Hauby(+1), Shura head(+1) + legs(+1), Potent belt, Gorget, Cuchulain's mantle.

It is in fact most likely the other way. Most of these WS have been shown to have some BONUS at 100% TP. the exact amount has not been pinned down.

My Thf DE set has will land me at 82.5% on lv 81 colis and 78% on lv 82s. Roughly 80% hit rate when i solo DE. Even with 95% 1st hit accounted for, AND the fact that im /nin making it 6 hits. I should only get a 6/6 62% of the time. I can tell you right now, after meriting there for YEARS, i hit 6/6 far more often than 6/10.

During the original 2handed update (1=1) they lowered penta acc by LOTS. They since fixed it back to normal with the adjustment along with 1=.75. As a user of Dancing edge and Penta for YEARS, i can assure you, they are not inaccurate at 100TP. If a lol1hander A- skill thf with no native acc boosts of ANY kind can land 5/5 DE easily enough, a B skill 2hander with better gear options can do the same.

Also, if you demand 5/5 eery time your crazy anyway. at CAPPED acc, you will only hit 5/5 77% of the time (excluding DAs that will skew this a bit) because you will ALWAYS have a 5% chance to miss any hit. 3 outta 4 pentas will not be 5/5 under the best of conditions. 70% shot at 5/5 hits with 90% hit rate (assuming 1st hit is 95% due to acc bonus on 1st hits). Eyeballing your TP return and popping a sushi because you hit 2 4/5s in a row is overreacting.

Which brings me back to "why stack dex for the purpose of Acc on penta." The only stacking i can see is haub/Raja/Kitty pants for a nice 25 dex with askar head and warwolf depedning on acc (ohat+life). Thats not stacking, thats using the best gear in the slots. What exactly is this dex that you are stacking? If acc is really hurting THAT bad, doing something like thunder ring over an acc ring is dumb. What other gear are you "stacking" dex on?

I have all the 3 pieces atm. It is totally worth it in dynamis really decreases lots of death with sacrificing like %10 of your total damage on city runs and totally worth it at snow zones where mobs have increadible high defences i am guessing i do even more damage in riceball gear in snow zones (someone has to test it)

With love halberd and riceball gear i have seen unusual high numbers when i ws also but not worth it against hagun it would work on bird camp though.

But in summary your haste/str gear beats riceball gear. I can say riceball is only for snow dynamis (you wont be hitting for 0 most of the time while tp ing) and may be einherjar.

Yes, other than Slugwinder, your accuracy on "acc varies with TP" WSs is not getting gimped by firing them off at 100. It's just that for other than the first/offhand hits, it's probably not getting boosted, or at least not by a significant amount. With Slugwinder, your racc is actually taking a very noticeable penalty by firing them off at 100.

Also, you can't crit with Penta, at least not anymore (didn't it have a crit mod before? I forget). I believe it's Drakesbane that can crit now, if I'm not mistaken, which is the primary reason why you'll occasionally see it spike much higher than Penta.

Did you lose faith? Yes, I lost faith in the powers that be. But in doing so I came across the will to disagree. And I gave up. Yes, I gave up, and then I gave in. But I take responsibility for every single sin. ♪ ♫

Finally got the second +1 cooking piece from the cooking guild over the weekend which brings me to 100+5 with advanced support and for tonosama being at 94 I am 11 over cap which(according to wiki should HQ 10%.

Made about 30-40 stacks and HQ 14 single shogun, making it another grind to even make the **** things, but it's possible. Thank goodness they npc at a decent price.

Wasn't able to do alot of messing around with it, but /war and brutal you get 30% DA, all other spots I slotted str gear. Was up in uly eating through the buffalo pretty quick, usually with no healing there I have alot of down time but I was killing about 5-6 before I had to rest.

DA proc on WS is the biggest thing I noticed, was wildy varied numbers, anywhere from 799 - 2009. I assume that is tha DA proc. Second thing I noticed was how much faster you get tp.

Food ran out at the start of a fight and suddenly it took forever to take down the buffalo. I'm looking forward to messing around with it more.

Thinking about these again now, maybe they'd be a good food to use for Hagun wielders, and just swap the 3 pieces in during YGK, to make sure pDIF is capped & with the very high DA rate for WS spikes.

Obviously, for building TP, nothing beats haste/acc etc, but using these and taking advantage of their goodness purley for WS (which is 70% of Hagun SAM's DMG). Problem is, although you'll cap YGK's pDIF, and add 15% DA, you'll lose around 20STR. I can't be bothered to math it out, just thought i'd throw it in there.